A Prayer from Jim Lowe… March 23, 2020

Each week during our service, Jim Lowe offers up a prayer from the heart. This week’s prayer is posted below. Jimmy, who is a firefighter and EMT, reminds us to keep all of our first responders in prayer as they do not have the option of staying safe at home.

…be well…david

*****

Heavenly
Father, Sunday,
March 22, 2020

I find myself in a place I never thought I’d be.
For my whole life people have told me that I believe in you even though I’ve
never seen you. And that I have always believed that prayer would carry us
through. And now, now they tell me that I can’t stand next to my fellow man and
pray as I did before, I can’t stand in the house of worship or the house of God
or the house of a higher power and ask for help. That we can’t gather in the
street to ask for your forgiveness. Because it’s only our arrogance that put us
in the situation that we are in now.

I was given an opportunity to stand before your
children and be your voice for some time now. In reality all I am is a vessel
because other than the love I have for you in my heart, I really have no words
of my own. I generally start the conversation but by the time I’m two or three
sentences in, the Holy Spirit has definitely taken over. At some point this
expanded beyond just standing in the front of Church, to now, every time I am
faced with a situation where someone needs to find some kind words to help them
through life, those words come into my heart. I find myself engaged with people
in conversation without even knowing exactly what their problem is but always
seem to have the right words to help them out. So Heavenly Father I ask you now
to help us.

Lord, no matter what the outside appearance was
that I would give people, at some point they would realize that I am different
inside. And I have come to a point where just saying this to myself is not
enough. So Heavenly Father, I wish to
beg for your forgiveness for our arrogance. At this time when we would normally
celebrate your Son rising from the dead to forgive all sins, it’s ironic that
I’m asking you for exactly the same thing. At some point the world is going to
have to realize that we’re all stuck on this a marble together. And obviously,
no matter what happens on one side of the world, it’s going to end up on the
other side. Good, bad, or indifferent, this virus is not discriminatory.

When this thing is finally over Lord, you would
have unfortunately taken more of your children home to you. Look Into My Heart
Lord, those people that I have in my life wherever they be…family, or
friends, or co-workers, or brothers and sisters in the many fine departments
I’ve worked with, they all have one thing in common. They are the people that
take care of people at their worst. They are devoted to what they do, and they
deserve be taken care of, to be held in your hand and protected, so they might
be able to protect your children…amen
(jpl)